Blood Memory

The story of a mother and son who reconcile after a lifetime of separation, only to find themselves facing separation once again.

When Tom Wilson was fifty-three years old, he learned he was not who he thought he was. He discovered he’d been a victim of Canada’s “sixties scoop”—a tragic period in Canadian history when Indigenous children were snatched from their parents and placed into foster care. What’s more, the woman he knew as “Cousin Janie,” who had popped in and out of Tom’s life since he could remember and who he’d always felt an uncanny attachment to, was actually his birth mother.

In Beautiful Scars, Tom told the story of learning the identity of his birth mother. In Blood Memory, Tom tells the story of reconciling with Janie and attempting to forge the mother-son relationship they’d been denied their whole life. However, just as Tom and Janie are rekindling, Janie is diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. She is given six months to live. Facing the second separation of their lives, Tom and Janie try to fit a near lifetime into the remaining months. As Tom’s closest connection to his past, Janie is not just his mother, but the key to understanding his Mohawk roots.

Blood Memory is Tom’s story of reconnecting with Janie, learning about her life and discovering his heritage. It’s a story of reclaiming a messy past, of grappling with a newfound identity, of confronting the horrors of colonization. But most of all, it’s a son’s ode to his mother—to her sacrifices, her love, her pain—and a powerful testament to how the bond between a mother and child can endure a world set against them.